'Flyboys' soar with vintage P-40 Warhawk

Young San Diegans build WWII-era fighter for New Orleans museum

Volunteer Jenny Bishop helps position the propeller on the aircraft during the restoration of a World War II era Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter plane by the Flyboys Aeroworks at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.
— Earnie Grafton / UT San Diego

Eric Preuss (left) and Jenny Bishop work on the restoration of a World War II era Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter plane by the Flyboys Aeroworks at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.
— Earnie Grafton / UT San Diego

Jenny Bishop (left) and Eric Preuss position the propeller during the restoration of a World War II era Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter plane by the Flyboys Aeroworks at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.
— Earnie Grafton / UT San Diego

San Diego  During World War II, young Americans in P-40 Warhawks battled Japanese Zeros.

Seventy years later, young San Diegans have prepared a P-40 to fight a new enemy: historical amnesia.

“One of the problems we have with World War II is passing on that knowledge to the next generation,” said Coleman Warner of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. “Projects like this P-40 really help in connecting the dots between generations.”

El Cajon’s Flyboys Aeroworks spent the past year-and-a-half building this sleek aircraft, a sister to the fighters the Flying Tigers flew over India, Burma and China. Work was slow — “We had to build it all from scratch,” said Jenny Bishop, a Flyboys mechanic — but now this project is gaining speed.

On Saturday, the Flyboys showed off their latest creation during an open house at Gillespie Field in El Cajon. Sunday, they are disassembling the Warhawk. On Tuesday, they will lash the crated fuselage, wings and assorted parts to an eastbound truck.

The plane’s destination: the Big Easy, where a sprawling campus seven blocks from the Mississippi River houses a Smithsonian Institution affiliate that explains America’s role in World War II. A Tom Hanks-narrated film recalls the European and Pacific campaigns of 1941-1945; multimedia presentations re-create submarine patrols and the Battle of Midway; and propaganda posters from the U.S., its allies and enemies bring home this global conflict’s savage emotions and life-or-death stakes.

There are also countless relics, from uniforms, canteens and diaries to Jeeps, tanks, a PT boat and a squadron of war planes — including a TBM Avenger restored by the Flyboys.

The team’s first job, the Avenger, a U.S. Navy torpedo bomber, is a hit with many of the museum’s 500,000 annual visitors. The Flyboys were rewarded with the Warhawk contract.

Now, the reviews on that plane are coming in.

“It’s cool,” said Jim Patrick, 62, a retired airline pilot from Point Loma. “If I had a soul to sell and a devil to sell it to and that’s what it took to fly this plane? I’d do it.”

From the wreckage

Daily, roughly 700 World War II veterans die. As they disappear, so do firsthand details of this chapter in American history.

Also vanishing: this era’s memorabilia, from front-line nurses’ letters home to planes that once flew desperate missions.

“We search around the world,” Warner said. “This particular P-40 came from the Aleutian Islands and we acquired it from a collector in Los Angeles.”

Actually, the museum acquired two scorched, tangled pieces of wreckage salvaged from two crashed Warhawks. They were delivered in 2012 to the Flyboys, whose many skills — welding, metalsmithing, woodworking, air frame construction — do not include miracle-working.

“There was nothing left,” said Jesse Williams, 29, an Army veteran and the crew lead. “It was held together with framing nails.”

So the Flyboys’ 12-person team acquired copies of the original P-40 plans from the Smithsonian. Then, using 1940s tools and 1940s materials, they remade this 1940s plane from the wheels up. The task required about 19,000 man- and woman-hours, every one of them supervised by Rolando X. Gutierrez.